N.C. community colleges revise curricula

As North Carolina continues to place more of an emphasis on green energy and sustainability, the N.C. Community College System is revising its curricula to make students more qualified to be hired in those fields.

The system launched a curriculum improvement project this fall that will begin to go into effect next fall and will be fully implemented statewide by fall 2014.

Community college administrators collaborated with industry representatives to look at the new demands in the state economy for jobs in energy efficiency and technology.

In response, the initiative — called Code Green — was born.

This program focuses on career paths in green engineering and will target more than 80 vocational and technical curricula in changing areas such as building, energy, transportation and environment.

The new initiative will group program majors together into fewer, overarching curriculum sections, said Holly Weir, environmental sector project director at Davidson Community College.

“(The community college system) looked at this not from an academic perspective, but from a job sector perspective,” Weir said.

Robert Grove, dean of sustainability at Wake Technical Community College, said the Code Green initiative will make recent graduates more attractive to employers.

Grove said a student can now train in a specific area while receiving a license for a more general career path.

“If photovoltaics haven’t taken off yet, a student is still qualified to be a general electrician,” he said.

Code Green also helps students who are still earning a degree.
Since program majors will now be classified with common curriculum titles, students will have more flexibility if they want to change their intended degree, Weir said.

A student can now take 12 to 15 credit hours in one curriculum area and not have to take another 12 to 15 hours if they decided to explore a new degree, she said.

Weir said this will save students tuition money — along with saving them a semester of work.

And by implementing these requirements statewide, the community colleges can have a system-wide course catalog that serves as a blueprint for each available course in the system, Grove said.

“The greatest strength of the North Carolina Community College System is the system-wide course library,” he said.

This statewide system is also found in other states.

Jeffrey Kraus, assistant vice chancellor for public relations for the Virginia Community College system, said the Virginia system has a central governing board as well.

But he said not all courses in the Virginia system are the same across the state.

Contact the desk editor at state@dailytarheel.com.